Do You Believe?
by Solitary Zombie
Summary: The year is 2013, and a young man is following a lead to find a legendary book in Geneva, Switzerland, and in the process meets someone he was not expecting.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This story was originally only supposed to be a one-shot, but I got so much positive feed back on the first chapter that I decided to continue it. I hope you enjoy it! I do intend to continue with a few more chapters, but as of now I do not know exactly where I'm going with this story.

* * *

It was a small building nestled closely between two much larger, newer ones that had shouldered their way into the too-small space that was the alley. The shop was of a dull gray-brown stone that attested to its age, and the only thing to set it apart from any other building in Geneva, other than this distinctive shabbiness, was an old wooden sign that hung out away from the solid oak door. The sign carried no inscription: only a rough carving of an open book gave indication of the shop's content.

Across the narrow alley from this remarkably unremarkable building sat a man, old and tired, his beard tattered and his hands filthy, plucking discordantly at the rusted strings of an ancient guitar. If one were to stop and listen, however, the discordance would begin to resolve itself into a complex, addicting pattern. Once it had wormed itself into an ear, this pattern refused to let go, drawing the listener in and in, leaving him begging for more when the tune finally ended. But no one paid this homeless genius any mind, and no one ever begged him for anything. He paused his composition and looked up as a thin figure made its way into the dark byway and toward the shop.

The bell above the entryway clattered noisily as the door to the shop opened to admit a lanky young man. It shut with a solid thud behind him, bringing the music of the city streets to a sudden halt. He breathed in deeply, savoring the smell of the old books all around him. Motes of dust were visible floating through the dim rays of sunlight that streamed through dirty old windows, tinting the very air of the place to be a subdued brown. The only other person in the shop appeared to be a deeply wrinkled little old man with a long white beard falling tangled over his chest sitting behind a gnarled wooden desk, squinting through a pair of bifocals at a weathered volume.

The young man coughed and spoke: "_Excusez-moi, monsieur, mais je cherche_-"

Before he could finish, the old man held up a withered finger and interrupted in a feeble but somewhat annoyed voice, "I speak English, boy."

The young man was simultaneously taken aback and relieved at this rude interjection.

"Yes, uh... was my accent really all that bad?" The proprietor shot him a withering glance and returned to squinting at the dark tome on his desk. Stumbling over himself, the young man started again: "I mean, sorry; I'm looking for a rare type of book, and I was informed that this... um... shop might have a copy."

"Ah yes," the old man said, looking up from his book, a thin smile spreading across his face that made the wrinkles ripple and reform like waves in a puddle. "You are the one who is coming about Le Grimoire. No, nobody told me," he cackled thinly, tapping the side of his nose. "I know these things. Here. Follow," he ended, creaking slowly out of the contoured red-leather chair in which he had reposed.

He shuffled back behind a tattered old curtain that smelled vaguely of mold into a storage room filled from floor to ceiling with decaying cardboard boxes full of old books. Almost effortlessly, the old man slid one of the stacks off to one side and away from the wall, revealing a safe. He reached up and carefully entered the code into a backlit keypad on the safe door, which then popped open with a gentle hiss of escaping air. With the gust came a cloud of dust that sent the old man into a fit of hacking coughs for a good while. The young man was beginning to be unsure of what to do, fearing this elderly gentleman was going to die right there when he finally fell silent once more.

He reached into the safe and carefully slid out an ancient tome. It looked to be easily two hundred years old or older. "Here it is," the old man announced, holding the book out with one hand on top and one on bottom to stabilize the large volume. "Le Grimoire des Magiques Noires."

The young man looked at him incredulously. "No offense, but there is no way that's authentic. If it were, why would you have it, of all people, in a tumble down dump like this on some forgotten alley of Geneva?"

This greatly amused little man, and he made a clacking sound in the back of his throat that seemed to be laughter. He grinned an enormous grin, causing his wrinkles to stretch and stretch across his face, farther than the young man would have thought possible. "You want to know why I have it?" He gently put the book down and raised his right hand and put his fingers together as if to snap them. "I have it... because I wrote it.

The fingers clicked and instantly the lights went out, bathing the room in darkness. This was not the darkness of simply flipping a switch, though: this blackness was oppressive and cold, as if every flame and light-bulb in the very universe had been simultaneously extinguished. The shock of it caused the young man to gasp and nearly threw him to his knees. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, the darkness was so heavy on his mind. When he knew that he could not possibly take a moment more of this torturous false night, he felt a tap on his forehead and suddenly found himself back in the light, as if it had never been.

The old man's left-hand index finger was still pressed against the boy's forehead as he leaned in close and whispered, "Do you believe in magic?" He smiled in that terrible way again as he said it. "I certainly hope you do, because you are to be my apprentice, for I am old now. I have always been old, yes, but now I draw near to the end of my life. You know who I am, I think, although I see that you are not yet aware that you do." He paused and sadly shook his head, as if thinking of days gone by. "I am the shadow behind every legend and myth of wizards and warlocks: I am Merlin, I am Nicolas Flamel, I am the one who taught Harry Houdini. But more than any of those names, who I am is Lonely." The old man leaned in uncomfortably close to the young man's face, so close that every breath ruffled his hair and tickled his ears. Despite the minuscule distance, the whispered question was only barely audible: "So, I ask you again: Do you believe... in magic?"


	2. Chapter 2

Note: This story was originally only supposed to be a one-shot, but I got so much positive feed back on the first chapter that I decided to continue it. I hope you enjoy it! I do intend to continue with a few more chapters, but as of now I do not know exactly where I'm going with this story.

* * *

Three weeks of immersion in this cramped, dusty world of literature had not dulled Morgan's appreciation for the scent of the written word that wafted through the dim, grainy air filling the bookshop nearly as decrepit as its proprietor. Every day he came in to work for half the day before Merlin closed up the shop and began what they were both really there for: the magic. Morgan surprised himself in realizing that he actually enjoyed the work almost as much as he had come to enjoy the lessons; it was nice to have a few hours everyday of peace and quiet without the bustle and rush of the world he found himself in. The first few days had been spent doing menial tasks, such as organizing the books according to arbitrary characteristics, such as size, cover color, or alphabetical order by way of the third letter of the writer's surname. By the end of the second week, however, Merlin had taught Morgan to mend some of the less important volumes, and he now spent most of his time in the shop doing so.

He was just sliding a page back into place that had fallen out of a tired copy of "The Life and Times of Alexandre Dumas," when something entirely unexpected occurred: the little silver bell over the door jingled lightly. The solid oak door creaked noisily as it opened, flooding the small space with noises that sounded entirely alien in such an old-fashioned place, like the pulse of the modern city that had grown around the quaint refuge that Merlin's Books was. The engines of automobiles and the wailing of sirens accompanied by the now familiar strains of the homeless man's guitar pervaded every inch of the store as a figured stepped over the threshold into the dim light of the single bulb that lit the shop during business hours.

Morgan was so shocked by the fact that a person would actually enter the shop with the intent of purchasing a book that it took him nearly a minute to realize that the person had not only walked up to the front desk where he was stationed but had also begun talking to him. Doing his best to hide the dumbfounded look he was certain had covered his face, he concentrated on what this young woman was saying.

Whatever it was, it was in French, and it was far faster and more complicated than his besieged mind could translate. "_Pardon, Madame_," he interrupted, "_Je suis désolé, mais je ne parle pas beacoup de français. Un peu plus loin, s'il vous plaît?_"

She smiled in response and said in a musical French-accent: "Ah, you are American? I am happy, I need to practice my English more. My name is Sophie."

Sophie was not tall, no more than five feet four inches, Morgan estimated, and she was thin almost to the point of boniness. Her dark wavy hair contrasted starkly with her abnormally pale skin, and heavy dark eyebrows perched above two bright green eyes framed by her high cheekbones that seemed out of place in the context of her round face. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on a small, delicate nose over a dark lipped mouth. She wore a scarlet scarf over a close-fitted black turtleneck sweater and clutched a thick book to her chest. She was easily the most beautiful and unique girl Morgan had ever seen.

Putting down the glue he had been holding, he extended his right hand and said, "Morgan, Morgan Feyson. It's a pleasure to meet you." He got up from the leather chair and made his way around the desk. "What can I help you with? We haven't really gotten many customers—well, any actually—since I started working here. If you want, I could go get my manager, he has far more experience than I—"

Sophie laughed softly, "No, no, I am certain you will do just as well. I am looking for a book, but I seem to have encountered a problem: I do not know what book it is I want. I was hoping perhaps you could help me with this, yes?"

Morgan scratched his head thoughtfully. "Well," he began slowly, "That would really depend on what kind of book you were looking for. The books we have here are all quite old, and I must confess they aren't a terribly thrilling read." Seeing her confused look, he continued. "I guess what I mean is this shop isn't exactly filled with love stories and adventures and light reading in general. However, if you are looking for obscure biographies on famous writers," he gestured ruefully to the volume he had been repairing moments before, "we have more than you could ever possibly read."

"I am afraid I must disagree, Monsieur Feyson," Sophie said softly as she set her book down and bent over the biography on the desk. "You say there are no adventures or love stories to be found in your store." She looked up at him and stroked the cover, her big green eyes sparkling. "Every life is an adventure, filled with romance, a story, and what is a biography but the story of a life?"

Without waiting for a response, she swept up her book and glided to the door. As she opened the door, she turned back and said, "I fear I have no time now, but I will come back again. I wish to practice my English more, Monsieur Feyson. Enchanté!" With that, the peaceful, pensive air of the shop returned as if it had never been disturbed, and Morgan let out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding.

Moments later, Merlin poked his weathered head around the tattered curtain that separated the shop from the back room. "What was all that racket? It sounded as if we had had a customer."

"I think we did." Morgan felt as if the encounter had hit him upside the head with a baseball bat. "She said she would back some other time. She didn't buy anything, but I think she liked the look of that Alexandre Dumas biography you had me fixing." The whole conversation had taken less than five minutes, but Morgan's thoughts were already running in circles about this young woman. Who was she? How did she find the shop?

Merlin disturbed him from his reverie. "Go ahead on back," he said as he tottered to the front of the store. "I'm just going to close up, then we can begin your lessons for today. I have a surprise for you."


End file.
